“THE GREATEST OF ALL THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF 20TH-CENTURY SCIENCE has been the discovery of human ignorance.” Lewis Thomas, Lives of a Cell. “OUR IGNORANCE, OF COURSE, HAS ALWAYS BEEN WITH US, AND ALWAYS WILL BE. What is new is our awareness of it, our awakening to its fathomless dimensions, and it is this, more than anything else, that marks the coming of age of our species.” Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Spiritus
is Latin for “Spiritual Power” and
also for “breath.” The Greek word with this same dual meaning (“spirit” and
also “breath”) is pneuma, the root of
the word “numinous” (meaning luminously conscious) and “noumenon” (meaning
“unmanifest spirit”). Similary, the Sanskrit word prana means both “life-force” and “breath.” As do these words:

Chinese: Chi

Japanese: Ki

Egyptian: Ka

Hebrew: Ruach

Arabic: Ruh

The
Spiritual Power (or Cosmic Life-Force) that moves the atoms and the
galaxies and drives evolution; the dynamic, radiant force manifesting as this
ever-changing world; that Energy which animates us, which actually lives
the body and mind—it is all a Single Power—and it islinked
with your own breath!

In the company of someone who is alive
with spiritual power, your own life-force can be spontaneously activated
and intensified to an amazing degree. Such initiation can bring about revolution in your life.

Accounts of such initiation (“Baptism by
Holy Spirit,” “Shaktipat”
“Pentecost,” “Direct Transmission from Buddha-Mind to Buddha-Mind,” etc.)
feature in every religious tradition.

Most traditions describe the process as
if it were a transmission of power from teacher to student, but this
is misleading. “Spiritual Baptism” is NOT truly a transmission. The
initiator does not add one penny to your treasure store! Rather, the
awakened person “alerts” you, whole-bodily, and at depth (below the
conscious mind) to the wealth of energy that already lies within you.
(Using metaphors from kundaliniyoga, the life-force is said to lie
asleep, coiled at the base of the spine or at the level of the navel,
until awakened by an initiator or some other agency or event). All the
while, this dormant life-energy is your own power and not radically
separate from the totality of cosmic power.

When a string vibrating at high frequency
is held near dormant strings, they begin, sympathetically, to vibrate at
the same pitch. Spiritual baptism (initiation) is an activating
resonance of this kind—not
an actual transmission (energy does not travel from point A to
point B).

The “initiator” does not give you one
quark of energy that you do not already contain within your being. The
“initiator” does not “fill you with spirit” as if she were a brimming
pitcher, pouring juice into your empty cup.

At the very least, this kind of blessing
happens at the vital-emotional level, and is simply a contact high, like hilarity in a comedy club. However, it is a
mistake to interpret these blessings as never more than psycho-physiological,
because at its most powerful, the blessing can happen at a vastly deeper
and more powerful level than the mere physical body and vital mind. It can
occur in the subtle body and the deep psyche and opens the so-called
“unconscious mind” to direct awareness of its own depths. The experience
itself might be as subtle as the echo of a dream, or it can be
overwhelmingly powerful, more intense than a sexual orgasm.

According to Greek myth, Aphrodite, the
Goddess of Love, gave birth to twin sons: Eros, god of life, and Thanatos:
god of death. That which is erotic is lively, is life-arousing,
life-pleasuring, life-sustaining and literally life-giving. But we have
narrowed and limited our life-force, our aliveness, to the genitals and to
the ego. We have gone from polymorphously pleasured infants to genitally
mature sexual adults, but at a great loss of eros, of life. The unfolding
process of awakened Life-Force in the body-mind is a reversal of the
narrowing of pleasure to the genitals. Becoming whole-bodily alive and
pervasively erotic again. All the energy centers of the body light up. The
whole body is an instrument of energetic pleasure, which includes (but is
certainly not limited to) sexual arousal and pleasure.

The imagined dichotomy between Spirit and
flesh (or Truth and form)[1]
is radically false. No such split has occurred or will occur. Existence is
never dual.

Fundamentally, there is no dilemma. No
split, no gap, no division. The war between Spirit and flesh must be
utterly abandoned.

One need not choose between Spirit or
flesh; indeed, no such alternative is possible. Spirit is already Reality,
and flesh (or all form) is already the function of Reality. The
first cannot be attained, the latter cannot be rejected.

Try and try and try to rise above the
body and all forms and functions. All such striving shall be in dilemma,
in darkness and in vain.

Ascetic strivers who seek to escape
upwards out of the body (into the subtle realms above) seek to achieve the
impossible. No matter how abstracted one becomes, one is still compelled
to breathe, to eat, drink, defecate and urinate, to sleep and dream.

The body and its changes (and all
phenomena and all changes) can never be escaped.

Grok this truth: “There is no escape.” Now
cease altogether your struggles to escape.

I have borrowed a term from physics, “continuum,” to stand as a
technical term for manifest reality—the totality of patterns within
ever-greater patterns in an ascending/descending holarchy, in which
space-time-matter-energy are indivisible, and all that appears is mutually
dependent on everything else.

This condition is expressed in street slang as “Everything is
everything.”

In Buddhism, it is called “mutually dependent arising.”

William Carlos Williams wrote a great little poem that reveals the
kernel:

The
archetype of the Great Goddess calls to mind a truth from the field of
embryology: The female form is the primary biological form; the template of all vertebrate embryos. That is, every male body develops
from a modification of the primary biological form, which is female. If
this conversion from female to male is blocked for any reasons, the fetus does
not change from its basic form, and is born as a female, by default.
Sterile, to be sure, but morphologically female.

In the case of human beings, between the fifth
and seventh week after conception, embryos of either sex develop generic gonads
that later become either ovaries or testicles. If these generic sex cells are
removed from a female embryo, the baby will still be born a female; completely
female in outward appearance, but sterile because of the lack of uterus and
ovaries.

What is more fascinating, if you remove the
generic sex cells of a normal male fetus, the baby also will be born as
a sterile female, vagina included. Therefore, the female form is
recognized as biologically innate. This fact applies not only to all mammals,
but as well to all fish, reptiles, amphibians and birds: All vertebrate
embryos are intrinsically female.

To further illustrate this female-to-male
conversion process in the case of human embryos, let us examine at what happens
naturally (if you do not tamper with the generic sex cells). In the case of a
male embryo, the generic gonads begin turning into testes around the eighth
week; otherwise, they begin turning into ovaries around the thirteenth week.
Nothing is needed for them to change into ovaries—they do that by default.
However, something has to intervene—genes on the Y-chromosome—to make the
gonads change into testes.

Many things can go askew in the transformation
process. Such accidents lead to genetic males, called pseudohermaphrodites, who
show a mix of incomplete male and incomplete female structures.

In fact, there is one type of genetic male who
perfectly resembles a woman. No chest hair or masculine build, no deep voice,
and of course, no penis. They are missing a cell receptor for testosterone, so
although they have internal testicles making normal serum levels of male
hormone, they never grow any of the male equipment that depends on that hormone
for development. The “girl” does not suspect any abnormality until she reaches
puberty and worries, “How come I’m not menstruating?” A trip to the doctor
leads to the discovery that she has no female internal organs, just a vagina
that dead-ends, and testicles hidden in the abdomen, where the ovaries should
belong.

As it happens, these blocked-androgen-receptor
males tend to be strikingly beautiful “women.” They have got the long-legged
height of males, large breasts and flawless skin (testosterone is a major cause
of oily skin and acne). According to my research in a number of medical
journals, more than a few pseudohermaphrodites have turned up among female
fashion models!

Androgen-blocked males nearly always choose to
continue their lives as women. They often get married to men and raise adopted
kids, as the mom. Without the receptor for testosterone they are women,
by default.

Worhippers of Devi will be tempted to interpret
this fact of nature—that the female
form is the fundamental embryonic form—as scientific evidence of the primacy of the
Goddess. A psychological analysis might ask, Did this biological principle (in
some deeply subconscious way) give birth to the Goddess archetype? In either
case, every male vertebrate on this planet has been developed from the
female kosha, not the other way around!

Life is inherently Erotic (in the
greater sense of the word). In fact, the Greek word eros means “life” (Eros and Thanatos, "Life" and "Death" were the twin sons of Aphrodite and Aries---the Goddess of Love and the God of War). The
Cosmos is Always Full with the Energy of Life. Enjoy this ongoing conversation
(exchange) of Energy. Enjoy the mutually-dependent arising and communion of all
forms. Enjoy the sacred exchange that is ongoing forever between matter-energy
and spirit. Know yourself to be this Continuum. Know yourself to be irreducibly
Bright and Eternal Love.

I
am forever embracing my Beloved. There is nothing else that I desire. My one
and only and total desire is to embrace eternally my Beloved. Why would I
bother with anything less than that? That’s the bliss I live for and worship—my
singular heart’s desire. In truth, I embrace eternally the very one I love-desire from my heart. I embrace
forever (without beginning or end) my consort, my goddess, my beloved, Shakti.

There are two sides to the coin of enlightenment; two inseparable halves that
form a whole. Traditionally, in Mahayana Buddhism, these two aspects were
labeled wisdom and compassion. I prefer to call
these twins, freedom and love. Without the
realization and development of both these fundamental and complementary
principles—freedom and love—one cannot be completely awake or completely happy.

The
practice of deep meditation soon makes obvious the emptiness of all phenomena,
and a certain sheen of freedom appears. When the intuition of original, free
being is potent enough, dependencies and addictions shrivel and fall like dead
leaves. (Or maybe not! Chogyam Trungpa and Alan Watts—eloquent
teachers of the enlightened view—both died of heart disease related to alcoholism!)

But
even those who have tasted this satori—this essential freedom from
the “stuff” of life—will remain incomplete personalities, unless they also
exercise and develop the complementary agency of loving relationships.

Too
often, I have seen meditators (particularly from the more intellectual
traditions, such as Zen and Advaita Vedanta) stuck in what the teachers of old
called "void sickness"—tending in their characters toward
indifference, fatalism, dryness. The main reason most outsiders misunderstand
Zen as nihilism is because so many Zen Buddhists are nihilists! These arid,
in-their-head-types, who populate every Zen and Advaita school, East and West,
direly need a good, sweet, moist fuck! And any refreshment of Buddhism for
modern times must include a generous splash of Eros, laughter and love.

All the world's a stage. A spontaneous display of conscious
energy. And at the end of this divine theater, where does it go? The conscious
energy remains when the play is gone. Then a new act begins. Don't get me
wrong, however. I'm enjoying the play immensely in this very moment and playing
it big to the back of the house.

From William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

Be cheerful, sir:

Our revels are now ended. These
our actors, as I foretold you,

Were all spirits and are melted
into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of
this vision,

The cloud-capped towers, the
gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great
globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall
dissolve.

And, like this insubstantial
pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind.

We are such stuff as dreams are
made on,

And our little life is rounded
with a sleep.

The
medieval German Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, talked about the void and
called it "Divine Ignorance." His way to realize it was the "Via
Negativa" (recognizing everything the Divine was NOT.) He also talked
about divine presence—thePlenum—and the way to realize it was the "Via
Positiva."

The
Mahayana equation, Emptiness is Form (Void is Plenum) has no argument
with modern physics, which looks at forms and patterns as mutually dependent
events in an indivisible continuum. The all-comprising Continuum within which
everything appears and disappears is the "Void"—but calling it the
"Source" is probably a better choice of words.

Calling it "void" is the time-worn translation, but what a weak noun!
Yes, the phenomenal world is a paradox. There is such wonderful, beautiful
stuff appearing—and yet none of it isultimate—it just doesn't
last—yet there's always more where it came from! Amen.

Einstein
said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is
comprehensible." Jacob Bronowski said, "All information is imperfect.
We have to treat it with humility." They’re both right. Because all the
comprehension available to us is structured on the human body-mind ("Man
is the measure of all things"), we are bound to have incomplete and
imprecise information. So mystery remains, forever.

Even
so, I’m a huge fan and lifelong student of the natural sciences. I've even
enjoyed reading a few issues ofSkeptical
Inquirer. My understanding of the
mystery at the heart of things doesn't make me a nihilist. I've even written a
couple essays trying to state why the ego is such a wonderful mind-program—the
result of eons of galactic, solar and planetary evolution. Praise the ego!
(This reminds me that Carl Jung said, "Egoless persons should not live in
cold climates.")

Two Aspects of
Reality: The Relative and the Absolute.

First, the
Relative: There are as many paths are there are people. Again,
it seems many folks I meet in spiritual circles grok this
compassionate acceptanceprinciple more easily than I do. They
aren't the types who would kick people out of the synagogue—which I can picture
myself doing: "Don't come back until you're ready to ignite with passion
for THIS!" That's not the only response to people sitting on
their butts and not singing or joining into the energy of the group. There is
the total acceptance response that seems to me more
"motherly." Perhaps both responses are appropriate in their time and
place. Niels Bohr, the Nobel Laureate physicist, said, "The opposite of an
ordinary truth is simply false; but the opposite of a great truth is also
true."

Then there is the
second principle, the Absolute: All dharmas are empty.
This is the all-dissolving understanding I keep trying to communicate
throughout this website. The entire phenomenal world
is only relatively real. Everything that comes and goes is no more substantial
(ultimately) than a dream. Its basis is empty, unknowable, ungraspable and
irreducible. Like events in a dream, all the worlds arise and fall without
lasting meaning, implication, or effect. This "emptiness" (inadequate
term, really), is beyond comparison. Beyond correlation. It is traceless—beyond
all information.

I have met scores
of people who have an intuitive inkling of this Pure Capacity, Void Nature: Muuuuuuuuu.
But from the responses I generally get from people when I try to yak about
emptiness (my mistake), it seems to me that they don't grok it
at heart. That is, they don't profoundly see that their own self-nature is
empty. Their own heart is the timeless, unknowable void. This
is the final awakening of "Don't-know mind" when you take it all the
way to its absolute, all-effacing conclusion.

And it's not just me, “my own particular ‘path.’” (Emptiness may be true and
work for you, Eli, but others have their own paths.) Yes, everyone has her own
unique path. But there is no alternative to emptiness.

Emptiness is the nature of everyone, everything, whatever the path. I’m not
being arrogant, here. I’m not saying my path is the one true path. (How boring
that would be; I would hate to live in such a world!) But I am saying that
emptiness is at the heart of you, me, and everyone. All dharmas
are empty. That is their condition.

This understanding is the "transmission beyond the scriptures." And
it is rare! The price of admission to this emptiness is one's mind. You have to
be undone. It is a shattering, a kind of death. And halfway gone is not the
same as "Gone Beyond." I let go utterly and fell into the Abyss—then
came back to my ordinary “public” ego. But underneath the everyday hairy guy, I Am the
Abyss. I Am Shiva, and I understand What I Am.

Who
can deny the born being, the incarnational process, the play of individuality?
The individual is not ultimate, not permanent; but neither does a song last
forever, yet that fact does not make music less appealing.

I,
the apparent individual, won’t last eternally. However, the source of every apparent individual is everlasting. There is no Source (God, Self, Reality) that
renounces the ego. Indeed, Reality Itself is ego-ing. Obviously, Reality is
constantly being born as individuals
(functionally independent beings).

The body is a totality that cannot be further reduced. The body cannot be reduced to an inner self or soul. The whole body (body-mind) itself IS the soul.The whole body itself is more than physical; it is multi-dimensional, reaching all the way to infinity.

There is no ultimate independence.

The Wholeness of
Existence cannot be reduced to a radically separate unit, a part that is
intrinsically discreet or permanent or self-existing.

Yet there is certainly relative
or functional independence!

For example, if we both have to urinate, and
you use the toilet first, I still have to pee! This level of
individuality cannot be denied or negated. So stop negating the ego, which IS the whole body.

GROK THIS PARADOX: You are both individual (a functionally separate ego-"I") AND universal (an unqualified mutuality and continuum). This is the very strange, very big truth.

“It
is better not to begin. Having begun, it is better to go all the way.” (Zen)

Don’t set about dying unless you’re willing to go all the way to
become reborn. The Hero’s Journey is not meant to be a one-way trip. After your
spiritual adventures, you come back home with your boon for your friends.
Consider the ancient Buddhist chant from the Heart Sutra: “Gone, gone, gone
beyond, gone beyond going beyond; fully awake, so be it.” Notice what follows
“going beyond”—“going beyond going beyond.”

One-way trips can put you dangerously out of balance.
Deconstructing your life and mind down to zero, seeing that all your meanings
and conditionings are ultimately void, continuing in this path but stopping
short of liberation is not recommended! Where you encounter
intellectuals who have stopped short—at nihilism, meaninglessness,
nothingness—you meet some profoundly unhappy characters.

Beware ego-death without rebirth and re-integration. Beware
nihilism. You must continue all the way through the process to rebirth and new
life.

Reality is not opposed to ego-“I”. It includes ego-“I”. The
body-mind personality is not (inherently) problematic, and does not
(inherently) need fixing.

“I” is a convention of language and thought; it begins to develop
at about two years old (not coincidentally) with the acquisition of speech. “I”
is hard-wired, like speech, and develops on its own. “I” is natural and
inevitable. “I” (in and of itself) is not a problem, not the cause of
suffering. Anyone lacking this self-organizing feature of mind, ego-“I”, would
be about as functional as a head of cabbage.

On the other hand, mistaking this organizing faculty of
intelligence, “I”, as your very identity IS the central cause of
suffering! The chief symptom of this suffering is fear, the sense of separated,
encapsulated, limited, threatened existence. The conventional attempts to cure
this fear can be seen in endless secular and religious strategies throughout
history. NONE OF THEM WORK.

The only effective “cure” for such fear is the awakening of the
heart-mind beyond its bondage to the false identification with ego-“I”. Then
consciousness is released to trust and love and laugh, to feel the Unqualified
Openness of freedom from limitation.

Language, meaning, imaging, abstraction, knowledge, experience—all
must be deconstructed (death) and allowed to reappear within the new
perspective of wholeness (rebirth). Everyone must die and be reborn. That very
theme is one of the oldest and most universal ways of summarizing the spiritual
path. But, ego-“I” does not need to be destroyed, or healed, or saved, or
changed—only understood for what it is: a natural program evolved
through billions of years of life and adaptation to become an excellent
conscious agent of Infinity.

Why destroy “I”? Do you want to regress to life as a trilobite? It
took billions of years of universal and planetary evolution to build “I”. And
now you’re eager to eradicate it? Get real. God, or Reality, is being
“I”. Isn’t that obvious?

Why not live as the “I” of Life? Be the “I” of Love (as in, “I
love you.”). It’s easier than suffering, more fun and takes less energy.

Part
of the problem of “getting to” enlightenment is the very presumption that it
involves distance or return, as if the purpose of life is to return to its
source. But how could life continue for an instant if it were separated from
its source? Enlightenment involves the living of another presumption: that
Source and Life are always, already indivisibly whole.

Another
of the barriers to enlightenment (and the most widespread error throughout all
mystic paths) is the notion that reality lies within. This implies that to go within, to turn attention inward, is to move toward truth,
to be heading in the “God-ward” direction. But, in fact, there is no God-ward
direction! To seek in any direction is to turn away.

Why
this turning? Why the seeking? What presumptions are being dramatized by all
the strategies of the search? Since reality is not a thing, a person, a force,
an object of body or mind, how can it be located by searching for it?

What if the heart came to REST? Not seeking, not grasping at all.
Not pretending to own or know or control. In that deep surrender, the mystery
and its freedom become obvious, and consciousness stands nakedly present and
unbounded. And that simple, intimate presence IS love and happiness and
completeness (enlightenment).

There
is only mystery, but there is nothing mysterious about the mystery. The mystery
is as plain as the vast blue sky. The wonder of existence is not hidden or
removed. Not even subtle. It is more intimate than our heartbeat. It really
could not be more obvious! Already, in your present experience, without adding
or subtracting a thing, you simply do not know what any one or any thing is.
You do not know what you are (so stop imagining and pretending; quit
burdening yourself with phony identities).

Typically,
we draw back from the on-flowing gush of life to figure out who we are and what
it all is. We withdraw emotionally, energetically, bodily. Wanting to avoid
this appearance, hold on to that one. Wishing to know and control everything,
in order to be safe from relationship and change and death—all threats to the
separate “self.”

But,
already, there does not exist a definable, isolatable, locatable,
circumscribable, independent self. Instead, the sense of difference, separation
and independence springs from our own act of withdrawal. In other words,
the separate self is not a thing or person, but an activity—the activity of recoil and contraction. Aside from that
separative activity, there is only the native feeling of wholeness (love)—even
while the body-mind-“I” and world continue to arise and change.

What
if we didn’t practice this habitual gesture of separation? What if (in spite of
fear) instead of recoiling from the great current of life, we allowed ourselve
to be engulfed in the flow, to participate in it without resistance? Then the
sense of separation would vanish. There would be no survival of the independent
one who seeks to know and to control. Then we would see that truth is not
within, as opposed to without. Truth is ONLY. Truth is Mystery. Our condition
is simply free, and we are already whole (complete). Therefore, “within” and
“without” are dual aspects of a single, indivisible mystery.

Seekers
who turn within, hunting happiness, become involuted, solemn and uptight.
Seekers who turn without, hunting happiness, become scattered in a thousand
directions.

Seeking
is not required. What is needed instead is an open heart to fully trust and participate
in this living mystery play. As Chuang Tzu put it, “Search for the Tao, and it
is nowhere to be found; use the Tao and it is everywhere,
inexhaustible.”

Sunday, December 18, 2011

All
knowledge is secondary, it is knowing about; it depends upon
existence itself. Knowing about the myriad stuff that appears can never
“catch up” to what always, already IS.

Knowing
cannot apprehend what is prior to the faculty of knowing. Consciousness
cannot grasp its own identity. Therefore, Consciousness Itself is never
identified, never known, never seen, never objectified, but only understood
as Mystery—only intuited and presumed and lived as the Heart of
everything.

Enlightenment
is radical intuition, not objective knowing. It is being, not
seeing.

Presume
this Mystery as the very condition of all that arises and never falsely
identify with anything. Recognize that all of it is forever included in
the Unknowable which is Whole and Indivisible, Indestructible and
Irreducible. Understand that the Real Condition is not any of the
appearing conditions, within or without.

Presume
the Perfect Mystery (Native Wonder) and live. Within this Mystery,
everything appears and changes and disappears. Yet That which is the
Source and Support of all things and events is forever unthreatened. This
Source is Unknowable, yet obvious as one’s own nature.

In relation
to the physical body this intuitive thrill of
inherent freedom is felt in the chest; thus the Mystery is also
named the Heart.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Our
very condition can never be objectified; that is, it can never be reduced
to a physical or mental object.

Because
our true nature is neither material or mental, it can never be perceived
by the bodily senses or even imagined by the mind. Whatever appears to the
senses or the mind is only more “stuff” and cannot be the nature of
consciousness itself. Therefore, no experience or knowledge (no matter how
exalted) captures or defines our original nature.

Our
true nature is transcendental. It exists prior to and beyond all arising
events in the physical and mental (or subtle energy) realms. It is
uncaused; not the effect of anything that appears. Therefore, it is free
of any trace of dependence on the body, mind and world.

All
that arises in the physical and subtle dimensions of space-time is
temporary. It appears, persists for a time (while always changing) and
disappears. This law is without alternative:
Nothing lasts; everything changes.

Our
true nature is not an object arising in space-time. Rather, it is the
Source, the Principle, the Supreme Subject (or Being), the actual Identity
and Basis of all arising things.

Our
true nature is uncreated and indestructible. Thus it can rightly be called
“Divine” or “Real.”

Everything
that is absolutely true of us is true of us NOW. This is the moment
of the Divine. This is the advent and expression of Reality. This
is as God as God gets. This is It—and you (whatever you are, altogether)
are always, already It.

Whole Awareness is the only ‘control’ of
life and experience. All else is attack or retreat from
a split-off (imaginary) position. Fighting or fleeing any unwanted emotion or experience
does not help to set one free of suffering.

Fighting
produces tension, anger, hatred and frustration—and the sense of endless war
against an enemy who cannot be destroyed.

Fleeing produces tension, fear, shame and
despair—and the sense of being chased or haunted by an enemy who cannot be
escaped.

Whether fighting or fleeing, such avoidance
behavior is a vicious circle: it produces more of the pain that one
struggles to eradicate or escape.

“Whatever we resist
tends to persist.” (Carl Jung)

Each stressful episode ends, but others
will later arise—and one is doomed to fight or to flee the pain, again and
again.

To become free of suffering, one
must live as Wholeness (radical non-avoidance, non-separation). This practice
of Wholeness must pass the “test” of pain.

Awareness (mindfulness) is the way.
Non-dual Awareness is truth and operates in truth. Non-dual Awareness abides as
the Whole condition—not as a separate, limited (false) position.

Until the advent of continuous non-dual
Awareness, there is no graduation from the “school” of suffering.

With loving kindness, I intend to
live the way of non-dual Awareness (Whole Body-Mind).

When pain arises, I won’t try to
prevent it or make it go away. I will allow it to be exactly what it is.
Indeed, I will open to the pain—“lean into it” (with relaxed body-mind
and soft belly breathing). The pain is produced in me. May I grok my own
pain (that is, may I grok what I am doing that is painful).
Exactly how am I producing suffering?

Whole Awareness is the only ‘control’
of life and experience. In Wholeness
(radical non-avoidance, non-duality) “I” (body-mind) am responsible—able to respond appropriately to whatever arises. In
Wholeness, my will (intention) is effective—it shapes the world—and
events happen synchronistically. Such “magic” occurs because I am not radically
other than the world.

May I always live as Whole Awareness,
and may the fruits of this practice of Whole Awareness benefit all beings.

The Buddhist psychotherapist, Mark Epstein mentions in
one of his excellent books[1]
that a school of Tibetan Buddhism renders the stages of awakening as
“Looking, Meeting, Embracing, Orgasm.” He says nothing further about this, but
since I readily relate to those metaphors, I'll give below my own brief exegesis (which adds an ultimate stage). Read the post "A Summary of the Process of Awakening" for a more in-depth explanation.

Looking –
for a path with heart.

Meeting –
a teacher, a teaching, a community.

Embracing

Falling
in love – entering the stream, the honeymoon
stage, drunk with love.

“I”
is not an object, not a fixed and
concrete self, not an independent entity.

“I”
is a process. The process that is “I”
belongs to the universal process, the cosmic life, the Great Way, the Tao.

To
dislike yourself is not to dislike a static and permanent entity (There is no
such one!) but to dislike what is actually the process of awakening. And such
contracted feeling is a hindrance to that very awakening.

To
love yourself is not to be in love with and identified with a solid, isolated
entity, but to love, respect, support and trust the total life process that is “I”—the very process of
Reality awakening to Itself. To love this evolutionary process, the body-mind-stream
that is “I”, is to be in accord with the Great Way of awakening and happiness.

Therefore,
today, love yourself! Have faith in the Great Process and its unfolding,
named “I”.

Love
yourself wholly. Be Whole and happy. Happiness is your first responsibility and
your basic form of service to all others.

Always Remain Whole, feeling and breathing and relaxing into the
total body-mind-world, which is composed of Uncreated Light and ever-presently arises
from the Heart.

You are always, already the Heart, the Light and Life; you cannot
be less than Whole.

This present stream of changes (body-mind-world) is always at
Origin (the Heart). We have never left Origin, the Indestructible Source. Now is the Beginning.

Never deny (negate, reject, ignore, recoil from) the Wholeness of
Life. There is NO ESCAPE FROM and NO CONTROL OF the total stream of changes. Therefore,
allow everything. Let everything BE exactly what it IS. Permit everything to come
and go in its own way. Be entirely present, not recoiled.

Because Life (the endless flow of phenomena) is a play upon the
Heart (Original Mind) and Its All-Accomplishing Radiance, simply be as you are
and live your life fully, free of self-concern and dilemma-driven seeking. Life
is Given. So let go and let God.

Simply to be present and free, living life as it IS, responsible in this moment, is true happiness or
enlightenment.

The way is Awakening from
subjectivity and inwardness, and to wholeness and radiance.

The being is only present and
free. Experience is only patterns arising within whole being. The stuff of the
mind—thoughts, emotions—is only arising, persisting for awhile and passing
away. It does not identify (limit, define, implicate and bind) the being. Reality is not identical to
subjectivity.

Consider this: Digestion is only a
function of Life; digestion is not an IDENTITY, not a person, not the
whole being, not Life Itself.

Likewise, subjectivity (mind-stuff
appearing and disappearing) is only a function of Life; it is not an
IDENTITY, not a person, not the whole being, not Life Itself.

Life is not identical to
digestion or to subjectivity (thoughts arising).

Digestion and thoughts are mere
functions, activities within Life.

Do not mistake mere subjectivity
as reality, as identity, as defining what IS. Life is infinitely greater
than the thoughts and emotions that endlessly come and go.

It is possible (and necessary)
to sacrifice your attachment to subjectivity—all your imaginings and memories
and reveries and moods—in silent, open-minded worship of the present Source of
all the starry worlds of the cosmos.

All that appears only changes and disappears. But the essential
nature and condition of all that we love is never threatened. The Basis of all
life is immortal (or unborn and undying). The Basis of all is self-radiant
being. It is the only “Person,” the single Identity or Self of all that
appears. The Basis of all is not locatable, but non-local, all-pervading,
all-inclusive, complete, prior and absolutely singular.

Reality is never identified. Every identity is un-Real. The Basis of
all can never be found, known, remembered, imagined, defined, limited,
described or compared. The Only Person is not cognized over and against any
thing. The Great Person (the Person of all life) can only be intuited and
understood. The Radiant Transcendental Being must be accepted (presumed) and
lived, directly.

Take heart as that one. Take your stand as that one. Live your
moments as that one. Be whole. Practice Happiness (Breathe and Smile).

The
Source is not many, nor even one (as a counting number). The Source is only.

All
the many and even the one are a self-manifesting play of this Source alone.

The
Source is not high or low, within or without. The Source is only.

All
that is above or below, inside or outside, is a spontaneous permutation (modulation) of the
Source.

Therefore,
the Source cannot be located or attained, or ever lost.

To
seek the Source by turning upward or downward, within or without, is actually
to turn away from its present totality.

Seeking
the Source is an exercise in separation and duality, for seeking necessarily
involves and maintains the independent seeker. To seek the Source is to
dramatize fear, dilemma and exile. It is to presume and act out the “absence”
of the Source. But the Source is not ever reached, because it is always,
already infinitely Here.

Seekers
lean toward the future in hope and dread. But tomorrow never comes, while the
Source is always timelessly present. Seekers recall the past and identify with
its moments, pleasurable and painful. But those moments are gone, while the
Source is forever now.

Awakening
to the Source does not require further seeking. It requires the utter abandonment
of the seeker’s false identification with separateness in this moment.
Awakening to the Source demands the release of whatever you are now holding
onto.

You are the necessary sacrifice.

Every
mystical tradition, across all times, places and cultures, has taught that this
“death” (or utter surrender) of the limited, independent identity is the sole
entrance fee to the freedom and wholeness of the Source. Intuitively, every
honest seeker comes to understand what is required. But not all are ready to
pay the admission price.

Oh,
human heart, do you really want the Infinite Heart?

Then
drop seeking altogether. Renounce the principle of all your concerns and
self-centered labors. Admit the Whole, Unknowable Condition, Now—absolutely.

The
Source will overtake you, bodily, at the instant of your true availability.

Oh,
sincere seeker, your seeking at last will become too painful to continue. Your
separate self will come undone and you will fall into the Source and simply be
the Source. In that revolutionary advent, Radiant Life will awaken you whole
bodily by spiritual initiation.

Such
initiation is grace. Whether it is called Baptism by the Holy Spirit, by the
Goddess Power, by the Fire of God, the arousal of Kundalini, or any
other name, it is the Eternal Life-Power that has blessed and quickened every
woman and man on Earth (and any sentient being in the universe) who ever has fully
awakened.

Praise
the Radiant Life-Current and the graceful awakening that unclenches the navel,
unknots the heart, loosens the throat, unwrinkles the forehead, relaxes the
mind, opens the Eye and returns attention to its birthplace and eternal home in
the Source.

The
various qualities of life, with their attendant highs and lows, never cease.
These cycles keep rolling on—up and down, ‘round and ‘round—even in the lives
of awakened people. Why shouldn’t they? Awakening doesn’t alter the Tao, the process of the universe, but only our
understanding of the Tao.

There
will be moments when you feel rather stupid or lazy about your commitment to
live happily and freely for the rest of your days; other moments when you’re
boiling over with energy and creativity; and moments when you feel oceanically
peaceful, beatific, Buddha-wise and free. These moments will always come and
go. They are examples of the cycling qualities of manifest existence.

Nothing
about the worlds is static. All is flow. Likewise, enlightenment is not static.
It is not a solid thing, nor a definite state of things. You can’t obtain it,
or maintain it—for there is no
independent “you” (distinct from the total flow) to hold on to any
exclusive state.
This insight is
liberating. One no longer projects upon one’s spiritual mentor a frozen
condition called “enlightenment,” or tries, oneself, to attain such a concrete
state of body-mind. As Suzuki Roshi put it: “Strictly speaking, there is no
such thing as an enlightened person. There is only enlightened activity.”

Because
enlightenment is not a state of body-mind, it follows that enlightenment cannot
be brought about as a result of changes in the body-mind (changes of state).
Rather, enlightenment is the enjoyment of prior (or intrinsic) freedom. You
cannot become free, as the wise have
pointed out, you can only be free.
This means no matter how much you change (and apparently improve) your state of
body and mind and world, you can never “gain” or “own” the power that is
already at the heart of the whole process—real freedom and happiness, itself.
You are already free and welcome to abide in
this priorly happy orientation (the vision of Radiant Wholeness) all the while
you move through the easeful and stressful moments of your life. In fact,
enlightenment is this very presumption of prior freedom and happiness, rather
than presuming dilemma and identifying with limited appearances and
conditionings.

Enlightenment
is an attitude, an understanding, a relationship to everything—an ongoingWay. And such enlightenment is nothing special, not apart from
life. Life is not a dress rehearsal; a preparation for the glory-to-come; a
progressive path toward reality. There is no path, ultimately, but only
reality. (How does one “return” to God, when God is not elsewhere or other?)
Nothing is more than
whole. This moment is complete, as is.
This is it, “the full
catastrophe,” as Zorba the Greek put it. This kind of universe. Exactly so.
Amazing. Wonderful.
Terrible. Blissful.
What can we do about any
of it? Take a deep breath. Release our grasp. “Let go with both hands,” as Zen
teaches. Abandon the principle of all our concerns and all our strategies; or
as Krishna puts in the Bhagavad Gita, “Abandon all dharmas and resort alone to Me.” Thus
surrendered, allow everything to come and go in its own way.
Troubles won’t disappear.
Sickness, old age and death won’t disappear. But if we can live in this unreasonably
happy way, existence will shine with more and more clarity, and soon we will
see for ourselves that reality is fundamentally open, spacious and bright, even
while all the possibilities of all the worlds cycle around their source, the
Free Sun of the Heart.

DIALOGUE

Life is a cosmic drama in which we all play multiple roles: daughter, sister, lover, friend, mother, grandmother, learner, teacher, etc.

In my role as Adyashakti(and it’s merely a role, folks), I have attracted a few students. But please understand that I don’t consider myself a guru. Indeed, I feel allergic to gurus. (Twice burned; once learned!)

Therefore (to paraphrase Alan Watts): I'm not a guru, I'm an entertainer. I feel deeply entertained by my vision of life and so, naturally, I enjoy sharing that vision (just as soccer fans love to yak about soccer). I hope that those who catch a glimpse of the vastness will also feel deeply entertained.

That said, I'm happy to respond to your questions when I've got time (mark.n.canter@gmail.com). But be informed that I often publish on this blog (or elsewhere) exchanges that I have with correspondents (without revealing any names). In this way I can address a number of people at the same time, which is useful, since we often are going through similar challenges. So don't be surprised if you find parts of our email dialogue posted here on The Way of Wonder.

Search This Blog

Plain Talk about the Unsayable

Like the taste of fresh, clear water, enlightenment is subtle to describe. Yet it is here for the tasting, and even the most carefully chosen words become obsolete as soon as you take the first sip.

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Many Westerners have heard bits of teachings from classical yoga about “Kundalini,” a bio-energy said to lie dormant at the spinal base until it is activated and rises to the crown, triggering extraordinary psychophysical effects. Much less familiar in the West are teachings about what might be called the “descending power,” as well as descriptions of a full circuit of life energy, both ascending and descending. This detailed essay compares the teachings of four yogic adepts of the descending power.

Smiling in the Same Language

Eye Opening!

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” Meister Eckhart (1260 - 1328)

2012 BOOK OF THE YEAR, Bronze Medal, ForeWord Reviews

'He uses solid research to create a wide-ranging, vibrant world" Kirkus Reviews ---- Jalaam, a bastard son in first-century Judea, escapes the bullies in his village by becoming a stable boy with the Roman cavalry. On a journey far from his desert homeland to a forested world called Germania, he befriends Hannah, a beautiful Hebrew pleasure slave. Through grit and skill Jalaam rises to become an Eques sapsarius (Cavalry combat medic) and, ultimately, a celebrated gladiator in Pompeii. But Hannah, now a wealthy consort, believes that Jalaam was born for an altogether different destiny.

SILVER MEDAL winner, 2013 Independent Book Awards!

The Story of Gen, a young woman who escapes a bio-warfare research lab carrying in her body billions of tiny organisms engineered from parts of her own cells. These microscopic entities empower her with wonderful and terrifying abilities as they compel her to complete a journey to fulfill their own destiny. As Gen seeks to learn where her superhuman gifts are taking her, she discovers what it is to be a very human woman in love.

Our daughter is our ancestor.

PUBLISHED IN 10 LANGUAGES. "Weaves a genuinely magic spell." Kirkus Reviews ----- In the blue ice of an arctic cave, a scientist has made an extraordinary discovery: a shaman woman's body, frozen for 25,000 years in a near-perfect state, with an embryo waiting to be born.... They called her Ember, the child of their heart, born to surrogate parents who refused to yield her after birth. Raised among the Quanoot Indians, Ember is as modern as those around her, a young woman struggling with a loneliness and yearning she does not yet understand. Stronger than her classmates, imbued with the power to heal, Ember's soul resounds with the cries and whispers of a time she has never seen, and of a people who beckon her home. Desperate to unravel the mystery of her birth, Ember embarks on a spellbinding journey to find the people who call to her in her dreams. Guided by a shaman who has waited for her return, pursued by the man of science who brought her to life, Ember is drawn to a place where no one else can go--where her ancestors, the golden-skinned people of her dreams, wait for her to set them free...

Shangri-La in Amazonia

PUBLISHED IN 4 LANGUAGES. 'An unexpected, deftly written erotic charge." Kirkus Reviews ---- Two American scientists survive a helicopter crash atop a South American jungle mesa, where they discover a 500-year-old Chinese colony hidden in a deep valley. The city, called Jou P’u T’uan (Prayer Mat of the Body), is a society based on the Taoist practice of sexual yoga: soul-awakening through physical ecstasy. But the population is dying because of its lack of male offspring. As the scientists puzzle out the mystery of the all-female society, an exotically beautiful warrior named K’un-Chien entangles the pair in an erotic triad that could heal their souls—or end their lives.

My latest science-fiction thriller.

“Canter weaves together exciting action, tender relationships and plausible science in this thought-provoking thriller.” Kirkus Reviews ---- Aria Rioverde, a professor of ethnomusicology, is rapidly going blind. She is renowned for her performances of Afro-Caribbean music and dance from her home island of Curacao; but how will she continue the career she loves when she can no longer see? Desperate, she submits to being a test subject in an experimental procedure that surgically implants tiny computers in her retinas and brain. The system restores her eyesight, but unexpectedly her vision keeps evolving—growing more and more powerful. When her superhuman sight enables her to spy a black ops intelligence operation hidden deep inside a mountain, the dancer suddenly finds herself fleeing from armed killers who want the computer implants that are inside her head.

CHECK OUT MY OTHER BLOGS (BELOW)

Collect 'em all!

Selling Storytelling

A smattering of notes and advice on the craft of writing fiction that sells.

Effing the Ineffable

Graduate school essays and reflection papers on Tantra, Kashmiri Shaivism and the non-dual philosophy of Ken Wilber

Contact me: mark.n.canter@gmail.com

I was raised in Kentucky hill country in a
metropolis of 400 tobacco and hog farmers, where I belonged to the only Jewish
family in the universe. In my dharma-bum youth, I hitchhiked and jumped trains
across the Western States and Canada and went through jobs from pizza chef to
surgical orderly, massage therapist to rock-show stagehand. After getting a
journalism degree, I wrote for a few Florida newspapers before becoming senior
editor of Men’s Health magazine. My short stories have been published nationally
and my debut novel, Ember From the Sun, was published in ten languages. I hold a
master’s degree in the Humanities (“With Highest Distinction”) and I teach
World Religions at Florida State University, where I specialize in “subverting
the dominant paradigm.